The Part played by Infancy 101 



old feeling that a dignified product of creation ought 

 to have been produced in some exceptional way. 

 That which was done in the ordinary way, that 

 which was done through ordinary processes of cau- 

 sation, seemed to be cheapened and to lose its value. 

 It was a remnant of the old state of feeling which 

 took pleasure in miracles, which seemed to think 

 that the object of thought was more dignified if 

 you could connect it with something supernatural; 

 that state of culture in which there was an alto- 

 gether inadequate appreciation of the amount of 

 grandeur that there might be in the slow creative 

 work that goes on noiselessly by little minute in- 

 crements, even as the dropping of the water that 

 wears away the stone. The general progress of 

 familiarity with the conception of evolution has 

 done a great deal to change that state of mind. 

 Even persons who have not much acquaintance 

 with science have at length caught something of its 

 lesson, that the infinitely cumulative action of 

 small causes like those which we know is capable of 

 producing results of the grandest and most thrill- 

 ing importance, and that the disposition to recur to 

 the cataclysmic and miraculous is only a tendency 

 of the childish mind which we are outgrowing 

 with wider experience. 



The whole doctrine of evolution, and in fact the 



